


Each a Hard God

by londonfalling



Series: nights like those you always force me to have [1]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Brother/Brother Incest, Depression, Dreams, Incest, M/M, Pining, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Self-Hatred, Sibling Incest, Size Difference, Twincest, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:46:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25696750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/londonfalling/pseuds/londonfalling
Summary: Dante dreams of realities and nightmares, finds solace in neither. Maybe he's just happy searching and breaking himself in the process, though. (Nelo / D1)
Relationships: Dante/Nelo Angelo, Dante/Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Series: nights like those you always force me to have [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932046
Comments: 28
Kudos: 43





	Each a Hard God

**Author's Note:**

> Sad porn.

You remember first times. Generally. He'd like to −

Madness, by common definition, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. He's struggling with this, but then again, that seems to be the case with most affairs. Dante's insanity has patterns in both methods and conclusions, and what he expects of it is a remote sense of stability. Got to be unique in his suffering, there isn't much else to him.

He makes it worse.

He remembers plenty of those, firsts. The first time he could look at a line of words and read them aloud on his own. A poem. Eva's delighted laugh was eclipsed by a huff coming from the other side of the room where a shadow was huddled in the middle of towering piles of books, the secrets of which the smug snake had learned to interpret by osmosis and sheer stubbornness at least three years earlier. Amusement at Dante getting it at the ripe age of six when he had mastered the skill aeons ago? Fear of abandonment, little brother having no need for his help in navigating the world from now on? Dust irritating his nose? _Soon my Angel came again; I was armed, he came in vain_ , said the verses on his tongue, brought there by some dusty old poet he's never bothered to locate again. _And I wept both day and night; And hid from him my heart's delight_. He will get no answers.

The first time he realized happiness wasn't permanent. Where once was a room they shared stood a bed he was now supposed to call his own. _Dante, you have to become your own person_. He was seven and suddenly adrift. The first time he really comprehended loss came a year later, in the form of two beds of blood, one on the floor and with a sleeper, the other in the courtyard and missing a corpse. _Be brave, it's time for you to grow. This will be for your own good_. And maybe it was. The only rule his existence follows is proving rock bottom a lie as many times as need. He's still learning.

The first wet dream, too. Incidentally it's also the one where he had his first imaginary kiss. Dante tries not to think about it. Luckily, he has other dreams to be bothered about, other firsts. The newest one is good at that. Bothering him.

_I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?_ Perhaps the worst thing about it is that it's a normal dream, albeit the subject matter is unsavory even by his standards. It would be easier to shift and shoulder the blame if he could plead sleep paralysis, a waking dream, delirium. If he drinks, it's possible to claim he's hallucinating when the past pays him a visit, yes, but day one is sober and alcohol can't explain the physical stimulus away. It's a nightmare, idiot − can't blame hormones and biological processes, je ne sais quoi, the pheromones the visitor may have been tailored to exude back when it still walked the halls of the castle, when he can't smell jack. It's his fault. Inside his head, he has his senses and experiences the flights of fancy with full sensation, and he touches himself to the thoughts, and because he touches himself the thoughts have gained weight, hand-made tactile fantasies. It is Dante who has made the dream into flesh.

Soon. When his Angelo comes to him one night, the first, he's killed it and been killed by it for months on end. It could skewer him with its inelegant broadsword or do the deed with its claws before he'd get even his terse hellos out, they've played that game before. Good evening. Blade in, guts out, bleeding out on the floorboards in some kind of extasy: essentially, it's just slaughter, intimate for a murder but less personal than some other phantasies. These days, he rarely puts up a fight. Maybe he thinks it's fair to let it have a shot at disemboweling him to even the overall score, who knows: it's murder-suicide when it's them always, no matter what exact steps they follow, and he won't get absolved. Dante or his soul dies and he wakes up. Simple.

That's a dream for another day, to have the dying be literal. Now, the nature of the illusion is clear from the get-go, as if it's something beyond their say. The Angelo is a mirror of a mirror: just like when he stood in front of a copy of himself and his former twin and knew he had to duel it, that there was no other way it could be, he sees the current path laid out for them. To be frank, it surprises him it has taken him so long to get here. Once the knight had him pinned against the ramparts and evoked a tell-tale reaction, the "when" became academical, not a discussion of "if". This transgression will corrupt nothing because he's done it before.

There's no explanation for why any of it happens, but Dante doesn't really need one. As a child, his bedside was filled with stories of a time when the lack of proper funeral rites was believed to make the deceased unable to find rest. A revenant haunting him is par for the course and them meeting like this is just a new spin on a classic. The way under his skin is to literally get under it, make him picture a mirage lifting him up on its powerful arms and slamming into him while standing. Day in and day out, repeat the same story on a loop, and eventually he is yours.

The Angelo walks to him; the dream rolls around them in waves, mimicking the oppressive gravity of its aura. A familiar pull deconstructed into its bare essentials and deprived of all identity. Dante drinks it in: his poisoned chalice, his punishment is to have what he didn't recognize in life rammed down his windpipe in the aftermath. Observe how obvious it is now, and how obviously wrong. The truth of it − he left behind a void when Dante killed him. Dante became the void himself after killing its previous carrier.

When it halts in front of him, it's impossible to say if its attention is fixed at him; the head in its grotesque shell is aimed at his and the lights are on, but nothing is flickering behind the red. Even so, he's painfully conscious of his own agitation. There are no eyes on his erection and it's killing him to be deprived of the scorn and judgement he deserves. In this respect the wraith has nothing to do with the ghost of him, the fallen. It escaped his notice, that Dante was so keyed up under his metallic touch, in the rain, on top of the tower. So he prays. Against the ruins of the fortress? No, it wouldn't have gone past him unseen. But he wasn't there to witness it anymore, and he isn't here now. Dante isn't there either, in the moth-eaten chamber on an island that no longer exists, and his visitor is not in his bedroom, exhumated and dangling on new strings. Not really. (But how does he know for sure?)

The Angelo walks to him and halts. It won't make a move to close the distance, less than two feet when measured by earthly means, no matter how long he waits for it. He's been waiting always and nothing's ever come out of it, so this doesn't surprise him. It must share the knowledge of what they're here for, and yet it won't act on the rules on its own. Perhaps it's one part of the punishment: make it more unnatural, turn the dynamics he spent his childhood with upside down. One of the ways Mundus has twisted the baseline of his brother is that the creature is purely reactive, never the instigator its prototype was. Dante has had several decades to grow into his new hide and learn to deal with the fact he won't be cast to play the follower and younger sibling again. He's grown even more passive when he ought to do the opposite, forgets how his proactive persona is supposed to conduct itself, lost his primus motor to engine failure. The Angelo reminds him quietly: his reason won't be there to set things into motion ever again. All on him, then.

Make the first move. Move on with the program. Dante takes a step forward, not quite able to meet the headlights.

None of this becomes any more familiar or easier with reruns.

For having fought the thing in relatively close quarters, Dante has had surprisingly little direct contact with its bark. He's thinking of it as if he'll eventually make closer acquaintance, has to abort the thought − it is dead, and it's difficult to decide how to feel about that tidbit when he's only sure of not wanting to feel anything in general. Strangely enough, he is curious now, how the grooves of its plating would scrape his thumb if he ran it along them. Should he? The guest he's entertaining doesn't seem to mind either way. For all that this situation isn't real, not sharing another faked first kiss with a being that's about to fabricate taking away his virginity doesn't seem right. Why half-ass his sins when he could commit to them properly? _How about a kiss?_ his past self says, as if there wasn't a decade and a final living relative separating them. Things have proceeded to a stage where he's fairly sure he's just playing himself, but it is what it is. Sighing to banish his doubts, he gives in.

Dante raises his hand, heavy with scar tissue and the memory of past rejection, to bring it to the stiff mouth, the tip of his finger pressing against a severe lower lip. Nothing like the fullness he's admired from afar, the liveliest feature on a glacier that only shifts when it's about to be broken, soft and so incredibly violent. What it was, once. The lashing he's conditioned to expect doesn't come. No reaction, no recognition. Dante is no one, could be anyone, he's invisible. He slides the finger towards the corner, wonders idly if the only somewhat prominent bow would cut it open if he applied enough force, if he could taste him on his warped death mask if he bled on it, if he wants to. _After all, we share the same blood._ A palatal memory of an old injury; Dante's bleeding inside himself but only tastes ash, his bitter end has turned the sweetness they shared acrid. The expression on black granite doesn't change. Can't. Is dead, sewn shut by hot iron and hotter steel that entered its master as a traitor, defeated. None of this matters.

Dante lays his palms on the dented cheeks to frame his demon and forces himself to look. The process is mechanical and he cannot make himself see. The sum of his faults. He'll never know what to do with it. Chills down his spine, hands numb from the frigidness and wishing they could remain chaste; longing makes repentance yet another sin. He doesn't see but he doesn't have to keep his eyes open to remember the face when he gets close enough for it to be obscured, presses his mouth against the muzzle, the horns now putting him in frames, his depravity on display. There haven't ever been any witnesses or survivors, but the gesture seems public. Dante concurs. I confess. When the unstoppable meets the unmovable, it is him who bends.

None of this matters. If the dream is so realistic the first time around. If it isn't and the sensations he recalls are his penalty for overindulging in the same bullshit years on end. The amount of misery remains the same in spite of its appearance changing.

Dante kisses the features in stone, first with his lips closed, then with a mouth that opens to let out a breath that should warm the marble yet doesn't. Something in him stirs at the careful press, so he lets the kiss unfold him. Grows number still, his motions sluggish, and all it does is galvanize him further; he sighs hotly, maps every dip and raised seam with his tongue, licks the sneer rainy, wishes he had a lingual vein to suck on. It's akin to making out with a looking glass − the Angelo doesn't answer and won't absorb the air he blows and pants on its nonstick surface. As he listens to the slickness of his saliva on its lips, he's weighed down by the distant awareness of the material being the same dark-forged chitin than the rest of the getup, yet on his palate it's metallic. Copper and a ferric tang − he laps it all up, thinks this is more blood than he got from him when he executed him for the final time.

Everything remains the way it's always been. He lacks Pygmalion's magic touch and cannot change the figure into anything it isn't. These are their roles. It's inside his head and will get inside his lower body as well, but Dante can't get through to it. To him.

By the time he disengages, he's fully hard. He acknowledges his vices: this, of all things, makes his dick wet, and it's funny for some reason, to be more ashamed of the caressing than the erection jutting out under his clothes. The Angelo doesn't laugh, just as it does nothing to wipe off his spit. Probably would allow him to grind against it too, leather forming a layer between them to shield the bulge from the burn, although knowing his masochism the friction might as well give him his kicks. Probably won't do it in this scenario, some other night. Today Dante unties his fly, shoves his boxers down to free his dick. It springs out so hot, in high contrast to the nippy climate of the room. Somehow he's able to plan ahead well enough to bunch his trousers down to his knees and to even kick off his shoes before trying the same with the pants. Then he caves in, palming his cock and feeling it heat his cheekbones. The kiss stings when he stretches the skin back, strokes the length, groans, presses into a tight fist.

His gaze rests on the mouth while he's working himself with his hand, the wrist bringing him closer to relief as the only thing moving between them. The first and last time Dante's ever had an audience, and it's the image of the lowest point in his twin's life that he's jacking off in front of. The awareness beats on his dorsal vein like a heart; were he someone else, he couldn't even get it up, but here he is, hurting himself before the Angelo, holding a burnt match in his hand and supposing he'll ignite it again if he stares at it or fondles it with enough determination. The red lights on him are dull and he can smell the cinder.

Dante pulls the knight into another kiss at the first hint of precum. Would it be better if he finished already, he asks without getting a reply. Facing puberty as an orphan meant nobody was giving him any sex ed and his monomania has made sure he has nobody to show him the ropes now. Well then − he will operate at random and regret shit later if necessary. It's the strategy that's gotten him so far. Now, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement, but beggars can't be choosers, Dante concludes as he detaches with a smack of his lips, walks to the bed and plops down into sitting position, glancing at his date expectantly.

After a while, it moves its bulky limbs and follows. Glad it isn't upset by his zero-effort seduction. Dante has no power over it and lacks the strength to mangle it without any weapons, but when it stops by the foot and he finds the courage to grip it, it lets him guide it down with tranquil obedience until it rests on the mattress, shoulders and palms lying flat against the fabric. Hah − positioned like a corpse in a casket. It is a wake indeed, isn't it.

Because this is a dream, the piece of armor on its loins comes off effortlessly and disappears once he concentrates on the parts it reveals. Because this is a dream, it has those, privates, even when Dante's unsure if Mundus deemed it necessary to give his faithful servant genitals in real life, seeing that he clearly considered internal organs nonessential. Because this is his dream, conjured up by his imagination and accordingly exaggerated, the creature is well-endowed for its size. Apart from a faint green undertone, the penis is black from the base to the cap, just a sliver of the purple knob visible underneath simulated foreskin. No surprises there. Literally, it's a crude tool, yet another formerly human feature weaponized against him. Of course it's effective anyway.

Of course Dante would like to fellate it, bring it alive. He would like to -- he would've liked to, to fall to his knees in the middle of the stream. Make him take him seriously and truly look at him, the clutch of his throat stealing his undivided attention for even a second. Play time. Maybe, the part of him that lies whispers, it would have healed him. If Dante drew it out, took him deeper, tighter, let him fuck his willing mouth only to seize back the control of their movements, held his release hostage inside his throat and on his tongue, his wounds could knit themselves together, and when he'd fall, perhaps he'd have the smallest chance of surviving; had he played the savior, perhaps he wouldn't have sensed his death hours later. He knows this to be untrue, he does, but it's easier if he masks his selfish desire into a more selfless disguise. Even the pretense hurts. He would've never. Let Dante please him. Save him.

Hah. As if he could've sucked the fight out of him by sucking him off, so eager to be good for him, or do anything else to change his mind. Getting Dante to submit to him wouldn't have taken much, he would've been so easy: hence having his younger sibling bend over or kneel at his feet wouldn't have sufficed as the power trip he would've likely needed to get off. Romantic love? Who gives a shit about that when you could have more power, absolute.

As if Dante's mouth would fit around the Angelo. Please, it's not even close. There are times when they do it anyway, later − should those occasion be called dreams or nightmares is even more vague. His jaw dislocates; the corners of his mouth extend towards the mandible and darken his blush with blood; he hears his skull rattle when it's nestled in the claws cradling it with undeliberate intimacy; he can't breathe and breathes in the gentle violence of domination. He gags on the verge of swallowing and feels grateful for the steady rhythm to which it feeds every hard inch of its flesh into his throat. For a moment, until it stills to shoot its load and withdraws, he has something tangible to trust in. Dante must have something to adapt to, he needs a push so that he can pull.

The first time he pictures them having sex this vividly, he brings the Angelo to hardness by hand instead. Fuck, it's… it's big. The texture of the shaft is sleek when he lays a finger on it. He presses it down, the imprint the tip presses on it shaky, notes how little elasticity there is to the organ under the silicone-like surface layer. Swears and sweats. The body of the phallus reminds him of thick rubber, stiff and unforgiving even in its softer stages. Suppose the tissue is still erectile, latent as it initially seems. His exploration leads him to circulate the border where the head flares out, across the purple crown, to the tip where his palm does its best to wrap around it. A rift grows between his thumb and the rest of his fingers as he slides down the length to the root and then back to the corona again, as the Angelo swells under his touch. No veins, nothing to circulate non-existent lifeblood through it.

Fully erect, the cock loses the slight bend it had to it while dormant. The stalk is stiff enough to support the dense glans upright when he lets go of it. Ramrod-straight, no curve to it at all. Christ, how is this ever going to work. Dante toys with the slit on top and plays pretend when clear liquid seeps out to run down the neck and his hands, now latching onto the shaft again; eager to please and desperate for a reaction, he imagines the Angelo twitching and letting out a sound when he pumps it and smears their skin damp. To hear what became of him would likely destroy him. The nasalness that drew attention to what he was saying and the seriousness sieving his tone; how carefully he chose his words even when they flowed out freely to illustrate a story; every nuance smelted down to produce gnarring or some other kind of monotonous rumble. That's what it would be now, voiced indifference. Anything goes as long as he gets to feel like his efforts have concrete consequences, though.

But Mundus has welded the helmet shut and Dante's own dream deprives him of a bare face. There is silence and it rings all the more hollow because there is nothing beyond it, no hidden satisfaction at his degradation or ministrations. Already during the first transaction, the deal is clear. Dante can't buy himself passion.

No matter how lackluster the being attached to it is in its reactions, the organ in his hands is ready. Coitus. Intercourse. Fornication. Fucking. He has no idea how it would work for them in reality what with the size difference and everything: the penis shares the circumference of his arm and it's surely long enough to do interesting things inside his intestines. He's encountered that kind of filth without really meaning to. Seedy shit, sick porn he fails to react to besides thinking it's sad that the stars might be drugged or trafficked or both, women with distending stomachs and bodies bloated with copious amounts of someone else's bliss. Guess it happens to males on screen too, but it'll be a chilly day in Hell when he'll allow himself to ogle at a man getting his rocks off, to have something to compare his chimeras to. If this were Mundus' doing, whatever reasons the devil might have for a plot that revolves around torturing Dante with sex, and if his soldier was behaving like the obedient hunk of clay it used to be, perhaps the it would wrestle him to the ground on all fours and take him dry with its usual unceremonious aplomb. Wouldn't probably mind that. The gentleness of preparation, on the other hand, will form a barrier between them. Their common language runs on bloodshed and entrails, not thoughtfulness.

He has been exposed to enough erotica, he gets the nuts and bolts of anal. While his own configuration is a bit of a stranger to him, the canal between his legs should be as stretchy as a woman's, yeah? Insert tab A into slot B, use lube to speed things up if they get stuck, the basics. The Angelo isn't lifting a fin to help him, unfortunately. The − hands. Seeing that the headpiece is the only part that comes off and can maybe be reattached, Dante suspects there'd be nothing inside if he tried to peel the armor off its extremities. Hands are gauntlets, gauntlets are hands. Granted that the thought of them inside him winds him up, it would likely serve no practical purpose. Blood does not proper lubricant make. He's learned the hard way, a slashed palm and an intact memory of a smirk that dry on him too soon.

Do it yourself. Right.

What is he so afraid of? He's gladly reduced himself to comparable degeneracy already.

In all honesty, Dante has no way of telling what it would feel like. He has never − he has never touched. He has never touched himself like that because there is, somehow, a need to dedicate the right to a disinterested, disembodied party. He's resigned, he never will. In the real world. Touch himself like that, even if by doing so he might find himself a cure and a way to do it with others, be touched, cheat. In the wake of the dream, this one, he tries to. In the future, Dante jerks off to it countless times and makes it tangible. Perspiration wraps the bedclothes around his legs as hungrily as his hand smothers his cock, it gets in his eyes and has him licking salt off his lips. Just doesn't manage to go any further. His sense of loyalty is something else indeed, jesus fuck.

Thanks to the hand job, the fingers on his right hand are slick with the precum already. Thick and viscous; wonder how it'll compare to actual come. Dante spreads the substance up to his palm, calm as you please. His heart, however, drums up a storm when he takes a deep breath, lies down on his back, gingerly flexing his buttocks. The weight next to him remains static. Perhaps it would help if he looked at the Angelo while opening himself up for it, had the incarnation of his mistakes wash away any physical discomfort. He watches the ceiling of the canopy when he spreads his legs. Dark mahogany, wood grains as distinctive as purple arteries on white, red and blue on black. A fingertip reaches his taint, slips lower, matting the hair with lukewarm wetness. The wood is dark, and sometimes when he looks at it, he thinks it carries a wooden expression in its grooves. The finger presses against his entrance; he feels his walls clench, the indentation in the middle hot and seemingly shallow. A droplet trickles inside to emphasize his depth and paves the path for his fingers. It's the nerves that slow him down and not some aspiration of making it enjoyable, of building up a nonexistent anticipation by circling the area until he breaks into shivers and his hips start to buck on their own accord. Why be a tease when no one is watching? Instead, he traces the rim just enough to make it wet and slicked and welcoming.

He doesn't know what it would be like, it happens regardless. He'll never know what it would feel like, but he still lets his delusions convince him he does.

The first finger practically slips in when he guides the tip to his hole and breathes; he swallows it up to the last knuckle and shifts, lets it sink all the way in until the ring is contracting around its base to feel it out. Painful only on the mental level. His flesh is squishy when probed from the inside; Dante finds it resistant but not reluctant. His physique adapts as he crooks the finger experimentally, pliable as it expands to acclimate to the movement and closes tightly around the intrusion when it retreats a tick. Doesn't take long for the tissue to wake up enough to accept a second finger.

Working the lubricant into his body, Dante thinks about − him. It's impossible not to.

His long fingers. Curled around the scabbard of a sword they were gentle and loving, caressing the woman with whom he could make music out of his viciousness, instrument for cruelty. Slipping inside Dante, they would first sink to the hilt, the touch a weapon too, then still, press the elastic sinew hosting them with idle curiosity, fingertips weighing down on the gland they find with ease. They share the same prints, the digits between his legs and the ones in his mind, twins in everything and identical down to the smallest detail, but they would feel different on his inner muscles. They would brand him differently, from inside out to the lips Dante would have to worry himself when he'd introduce a faster rhythm, not fast enough. Unhurried and unshaken by his pleas, he would work them in and out of his body, twisting and straightening them unpredictably, scissoring their width to spread him wider for him for a long torturous minute to return to the simpler motions. The tempo to which Dante would try to jerk his lower body would never correspond with that of his tormentor, _Don't get so cocky_ , his pushiness savored and discarded. When Dante presses his free hand on his stomach to copy the one he'd splay on him to restrain him, he can't feel either of them through his middle, him or his personal demon, even when there are three fingers joining in him now.

His flesh obeys the memory of nimbleness, slackens to receive something it'll never get to have. Lying on his back in the darkness behind his eyelids, Dante gets bolder with his movements. If he concentrates on the sounds of sex, he can almost ignore the fact that there's only one active set of lungs in the room, vibrating with his own sighs. He senses the figure next to him and it turns him on to have it there. Hasn't heard it move its helm, there are no eyes on his ass, but there could be. The thought carries him; Dante fingers himself, gets used to being breached, the penetration, does it faster, gradually more tensile, circles the border with his free hand as it stretches and warms.

He would know how to touch Dante. Can't tell how he reaches this conclusion. It's natural that he would, unnatural as it would be for them to mate. Perhaps he even had experience, snuck into someone else and made himself welcome. Dante, ruined before his time, has no one to do it to him even in his fantasies. He ought to go out, see people, bed them; it would be more virtuous of him to commit normal adultery. Whore himself out to any man with pale skin to maintain the illusion, get creative with positions. Someone tall and leggy to fuck him from behind. A blond, perhaps. Anyone with confident hands, really, a lithe body, a full mouth that would bite him as meanly as it'd embrace him, a, oh, a knife of a gaze, blue, a katana on his hips −

It's impossible not to think about him.

What would he see, what does it look like? These are separate questions. The latter deals with a visibly observable fact. Not sure about facts in general and this one neither, never seen his naked body much. Whenever he happens to fool around in front of a mirror, he does it in bad, unflattering light so that it won't become a habit; he refuses to condition himself to pictures, hollow pixels and digital emptiness. It's smaller a problem than it could be at worst, thank god for whiskey dick and occasional dysfunction. Dante hardly recognizes himself on the shiny surface a fork, so likely he'd face his current state of disarray, glistening pink and oiled with sweat, with confusion.

The first question − it's a fact too. The lens changes and gets more accurate. Seeing him, his twin would have the words for what they both find despicable. Dante hopes he loathes himself enough to make up for the hatred he'd have for him.

Sensory feedback haunts him, the truth would be apparent without it. What's missing, who the bed and the knight do not smell like. What this is and what it isn't. The angle is bad, Dante's wrist is cramping from the strain. His own hand feels somewhat foreign inside him, and he can't help but think it's alien in a way his fingers wouldn't be, wouldn't have been. It keeps him on the brink, the tips of his digits bearing down on his inner nerves, wet thrusts against the spot that makes his prick jump, heavy as it is with his arousal. The sinking feeling in his stomach tells him his pleasure is only partly due to his own actions; they simulate someone else doing it, and really, does he have to give a damn that a simulation is his only reality? It's the thoughts that drive him wilder and make his pelvis tilt up to meet the strokes, that they're preparation for the cock he's about to take, and it's those thoughts that make him able to take the fourth finger so easily. The shame, guilt, and sorrow, mixing into heat. He could orgasm like this. Won't. He has to see this through.

Empty again, Dante wheezes as his wrinkled fingertips seek the linen for leverage. He shifts his weight to roll to his side with another oomph. Sexy. As heady as the notion of straddling the colossus and impaling himself on it might be, his remaining wits tell him he must take this lying down. Spooning it is. He scoots closer until his bottom brushes against the carapace, spreads his legs wide and hooks one of them over it. His blush doesn't make the position any less shameless and shameful. Behind his back, the Angelo is erect but does nothing when he's done with his shuffling. If the encouragement, Dante presenting himself to it on a silver platter, isn't tempting enough for it to take initiative, they're in for a disappointing ride with, uh, minimal riding. In some imaginary scenario, it might test his opening with a talon or go to town on it straight ahead. In this one, Dante is holding up a limb like an idiot and waiting for it to do anything, hump the doll on display, shove him face-first into the pillows, whatever. Who is taking advantage of whom now?

Fuck it. Sensitized to lower temperatures, Dante gasps when he brings the member to his perineum and aligns it with his entrance. He rubs the blunt head against the hollow he's opened for it, finds it slippery. The tip leaves a trail of sheen on him when it slips from his grasp to poke the bump where his tailbone cuts off his spine. Frustration bubbles up and makes him push against the cock harder, but it only glides along his cheeks, missing the target, makes him curse and clinch and wonder if the creature notices. From what he can tell, it isn't even looking at the spot where they are about to join, and he has no idea why this makes him feel so insulted and more naked than his half-decent state of dress alone would imply. It's just a dream and the cumulation of later fantasies, and he still can't accomplish such a simple task, feels hot under the collar of his coat from both embarrassment and impotent lust. Whatever it tells about him as a character is unflattering.

The Angelo is stock-still but feels so lifelike when he's holding its erection, tries to pull himself open with a thumb to guide the cockhead inside him. Applies more pressure, cries out when it slips again. _You cannot handle it_ , the past mocks him. Dante bites his teeth to ignore the presence of Temen-ni-gru in the room and him. Try again, they've got all night.

Maybe the pathetic exhibit he paints makes the Angelo pity him; his laughter switches into a sudden moan when there's movement behind him and as a result, the huge glans pushes against the underside of his dick. It's an accident, dominos falling in a chain reaction, nothing more, rough, but it doesn't stop his legs from shuddering and wobbling around as if they're instinctively trying to close around the contact. Consequently, the angle gets worse. Shit. It's as if a syringe has been injected into his bloodstream to change his stress into flaccid relaxation, at least momentarily. Dante loses his balance, slumps towards the center of the mattress with his knees closed.

With a small creak of the armor, something that he mentally dubs as the equivalent of a sigh, a pair of gauntlets seizes his flanks. Pulls him up, his femurs wide apart. Dante lets himself be malleated into an improved pose that puts his back partly on top of the Angelo and partly the mattress, a tad more secure. More exposed and available. The Angelo doesn't hesitate to plant its hands on the inner sides of his thighs to lock him into position. It's maddening enough to have the rough texture of its abdomen against his rear and the protrusions of the plating digging into his flesh; with the icy-sharp palms settling on such an intimate spot, his blush swelters uncomfortably. The twin grip is too unwavering and perfect in its symmetry to allow him to call the gesture demanding. He makes a valiant effort nevertheless, the past weight of them on his neck making it hard to swallow. The Angelo lines its groin with his entrance with ease, Dante wishes it'd fumble a bit. Apparently, any sign of them being driven by a common urge is enough to make his joints weak. His heart is vibrating in his legs as the creature turns to its side to lean forward and finally, into him. He'd like to formulate a remark, a taunt, _c'mon fuck me_ , something, to pretend they are two sentient beings about to make love or fuck each other's brains out, but the feeling of it sliding into place turns his brattiness into silence, chocked out in surprise and pain.

Hands spreading him open, the Angelo slowly begins to insert itself in Dante's ass. The press is continuous with its machine-like precision and strength, but it hardly feels like a single motion with all the resistance slowing it down to the pulse of his convulsions. Tight. Inflexible, stocky as hell, impossibly thick as the head bobs in, firm and unyielding, just a few inches, as it drags against the walls that try to clutch it, stop it, push it out, pull it all in right away at once _now_ , maybe a foot, but the pace stays the same no matter how much he tries to squirm and cram another meter in, miles and miles and miles of endless insistent solidness. His back flexes with tension and arches upwards when he senses his sphincters give into the assault. Unable to trash about, Dante wants to squirm down on the cock to get it over with already, but how could he when the entry is taking him to his limits at such a leisurely pace and when, instead of rearranging themselves, when his insides seem to be content to burn. It isn't the pinpoint-keen, narrow and fast distress he's accustomed to, the sword he's foolishly expected in spite of the intruder not being a blade. This, he grits his teeth, head thrown back, eyes cast at the curtains but unable to take anything in, this is closer to real than the compatibility he has been dreaming of. Just as all-consuming, yet far from the seamless way Dante thinks his other half would fit into him.

It only stops once during the entirety of the scene, when it finally sheathes itself properly. By the time it has accomplished that, tucked itself in him fully, Dante is breathing so hard the air he inhales is like a solid object lodged inside his chest. Goes well with the lump behind his Adam's apple, feelings. The chunk of oxygen is about as uncontracting as the creature he's trying to accommodate, so when he writhes without knowing which way he wants to go if any, his thorax is almost as reluctant to budge as he is from the waist down. Immobilized by the gloves and his own reactions, he shivers and trembles and quivers on the cock; muscles he didn't know he had and is not convinced he possesses outside of this realm sing the tremor, uncontrollable, the train of his thoughts runs into a wall to stifle the narration in his head. It's not that it hurts, that he can deal with. The ache, in, out, breaching him, the Angelo existing in a mass packed into him, is new. It's pervasive. Losing control is − good. He didn't think he'd really get it. Isn't prepared to experience it, but it's out of his hands now and he likes it even if it's difficult to conform to. Take a more hospitable shape. The fit is tight. His desires are wide. Dante hypoventilates, overbreathes, hisses. Then the Angelo draws back a bit to pump back between his thighs, assumes an unchanging pace again. It takes a while to notice his own erection is flagging in spite of the fact he's never been this aroused.

It's so cold. It's − Ah. Fuck. Even if the initial shock of being penetrated by a ridiculous width is petering out, Dante is a damn mess, sensation a ghost even in the tips of his hair. The Angelo drives its cock into him and drives him out of his mind. Ambivalent, he's always been torn in twain, as a half of a whole he's less than the sum of his parts, but now that he's split in two from the middle and polarized from the focal point where they meet, duality becomes acute. Dante's lower body is boiling under his soaked skin and its flustered tint, yet the angel is cold as rain, steel, goodbyes. Contrasts. His red-hot pain stretching him wider and farther in depth, the Angelo's cool flesh soothing it. Red and blue. Dead and alive, buried and burrowing. He clasps it tighter, and even though the muscles surrounding his walls warm up with the repeated movements, the lining clings to it, makes it drag heavy against him. Friction. Dante groans. Almost asks if it likes this, his hole, him, if he feels good, as viscerally crass as its bluntness. Doesn't know what to do with his hands and doesn't know what he ends up doing with them. Gripping the sheets, the frosty limbs, his limp overwhelmed abdomen, his mouth that's tempted to lapse into horny pained noises. Should stuff it with his fingers, but he lacks the coordination and wants them to be someone else's. He'd love to blurt out something stupid to ease the pressure that expands beyond his pubic bone when the Angelo eases into him so firmly, but he'd splinter if he cracked wise. Can't deflect it with humor, the way his anatomy is struggling against the thing lodged inside him, more solid than the pelvis surrounding its path.

_Pathetic._

I know you are, but what am I? He answers his recollections with a growl that might have been laughter in some other life, wishing he could invent a better comeback to an observation made by a fallen man, but his synapses are fried and he is, he is pathetic, he's perfectly aware he's going to come from this, zero dignity in him or the vocalizations he's leaking out like cheap blood.

His memories keep him company in the form of the Angelo. The rhythm remains the same on its hips but transforms on Dante's when his body loosens inch by inch, tense, jelly, in out in. It's as if the density of it is changing, or at least shifting higher to coil into tension behind the loose dick that's now bouncing uselessly with each thrust. He's nothing if not adaptive. Starved, selfishly squeezing around the length each time the Angelo draws back and relaxes when it rams in, devouring more than he can take. Too much but nowhere near enough. Dante wants it above him to grip his knees and force them apart for a better angle, to desire him, hit deeper, crumble into erratic movements, greedy to possess him, appreciate how receptive he is for it, wants to huff against the helmet until he sees his reflection in the steam, _you are mine_ , his voice. Hold his wrists down, hold him down, hold him, the only one strong enough to do it, he wants to feel wanted. What Dante should get in exchange for his body is having it used with the thoroughness he hates to love.

This is his dream. Life for him isn't fair.

If his partner is nearing completion as urgently as he is, it does so very inconspicuously. The noises Dante hears are his as the Angelo neither has the vocal folds nor the thirst to express itself, and it's his body that gives voice to their contact, the balls behind his taut with too heavy a release to move with them. Facing the window, closing his gaze from the night, his vision simmers in chromatic pulses. Crimson, blue. When he allows himself to be demonstrative not only with his slackening but also his loudness, his cries gain a darker note.

There's a name on his lips. The poor imitation of a kiss he's stolen does nothing to hide that there is always a name on his lips, always accompanied by an apology; here, he thought it would pour out of him like the guts he usually serves to his only guest. Dante has rarely felt the need to beg forgiveness for feeling good, though. Under the emotions that mount him and the tireless force that's hilted to the brim, he is. Feels good. Feels bad for it. How disgusted would he be to witness the sight? Little brother debauched in his fucked-out haze, his arousal an angry, aggressive red. Another betrayal: how much Dante enjoys violating him by being violated by an inferior semblance of him, how low he'll stoop, if it is visible through his abdomen, does his belly show how the Angelo fucks into him, that it is the happiest he gets. Even this thought turns him on.

It hurts and it will hurt even more when it's over and years of daydreaming pile up on top of it, but the seal of Dante's body remains intact and sickly slick. No tears on him, he laughs, on or between his cheeks. The expanse of his skin is as watery as the corners of his eyes, yet submerged and drowning as he is, there is no blood, no tears. He envelops the Angelo as a wound and sleeve around its erection, surrenders to the flow of the thrusts and the memories.

For the first time in his life, he both is and isn't alone when he comes.

Dante's climax is deep, goes off inside him without a warning. Has him spasm in agony, unable to differentiate between pleasure and whatever its polar opposite happens to be. It's a culmination of pain and feels the same than all his flat, sad peaks, only harsher, more real. It drowns out the need to be kissed too, the side of him that's screaming for affection, and the brutality is what he craves for a guidepost. Still − no matter how great it is, he nevertheless hangs himself to the thought that if it were him, he would, he, he'd amplify the intensity even further by introducing a different cadence. The release still has shallowness to it even when it undulates and aches and when he spills on his stomach at once, just like that, with no one to coax it out by doing him harder. A hand on his scar to hurt him, maybe, or on his navel to emphasize the strokes that grow rougher, teeth on his shoulder, a kiss, a praise, a tongue to tell him how far he has fallen and much he's despised for it. This does not break him, the way he'd want it to tear him apart, the way Dante would like to be broken. He has to − what he needs is to have only one thing to zero in on, but as long as he's got the fixed pace he can rely on, he'll be unable to give himself to anyone completely. Even the Angelo is unwilling to own him, refuses to milk the last shreds of control out of him.

It's an axiom, of course. Subjecting himself to a fantasy only changes his perception of himself. Having the Angelo inside his mind this way gives him insight he already has but shuns, and with nothing but the memory of its gauntlets supporting him, he has to take it. Receive, endure. Times like these, Dante embodies his shitty metaphors. He can beg it and threaten it and gains nothing by doing so, won't alter the tempo, won't alter the course of fate. Drop to his knees, let himself disintegrate into the river without being able to keep it from washing their happy ending away into the abyss, useless scum incapable of protecting what could have finally freed him. If he had delayed him a while longer, and he knows he couldn't have and still thinks about it, and paid for it with his life, he wouldn't be here where it's as futile to wish for more roughness as it is to hope for a change in history already set in stone. You know you're doomed when your own fictional wank fodder has the edge on you.

Edge. If it were the Angelo edging him or itself, maybe its deliberation would breed more lust rather than add to his misery. Wanting this to last longer is, would be, intent. Wanting him, showing it, is intent. Dante wants it to crush his hips but the dual stress remains relatively light and elsewhere as it pushes into him steadily, relentlessly, unaffected by the vice tightening around its girth. There's no desperation in it, attempts to cling to the feelings or the curves under his shirt, feel more of him and trace its own movements inside of his body, bend him in half to gain full access. It is all function, pragmatic purpose. Not what he needs. A hitch in the rhythm it is rocking into him. Thrusts as sloppy as his skin. Stutter, give him bruises to hold onto and indentations on his shanks. Please. There's too much distance even when it's buried as far as it can go and reaches his core with its wide tip, carves itself a place inside him only to abandon it each time it glides out of him, just the tip of its penis keeping him open. Not what he needs, so he hears distant words echo in a gross misapplication, just like the functions the Angelo is made to perform now.

_I was so eager −_

_I need more_ \--

It's a dead voice. Dante is scrambling to draw tenderness from a dry well, or brutality, whatever is available, whatever he can get for free, what's enough, and nothing is because he didn't love him and didn't hate him enough to hurt him by sleeping with him and leaving him and he's dead.

If it weren't for the trickle of wetness escaping him, he wouldn't even know when the Angelo reaches its climax. Might sense a beat on its cock if he clamped around it just so, but his entire body is raw and throbbing. Dante won't be trash talking its stamina, not when he'd have gone off in a nanosecond himself if he had its grip on his dick, not when the tissue it's rutting against is so swollen and sore to touch, but it does appear that his tightness is affecting it after all. How much does it feel, it must have a sense of pressure, of warmth, maybe even an understanding of his submission, how does it feel for it to fuck into his heat, sense it constrict around its bulk; if it weren't, if he wasn't so, if he had tried to bring it off with his hands and mouth, perhaps it would last. But the Angelo is coming now: the pulses diving into him keep their clockwork-regular intervals when it fills him and spreads its semen along the way, and Dante's body pulsates weakly in reply.

For all that the addition of fluids makes the noises of the cock still sliding inside him wetter and louder, the amount seems moderate, not enough to round him out or feel much like anything in itself. The Angelo pulls out too soon, won't keep him plugged and let him feel it soften, nested between his cheeks as if it were fond, snug. Could he fall asleep in a dream and with a mirage inside him, trying to keep it warm with his own body heat? Dante's too spent to lament the loss or try and figure out how long it would have to keep nailing him to force a dry orgasm. The suction dissipates with a disgusting and disgustingly obscene sound; his insides collapse around space that's once again empty, and as the gloves retreat, the limp v of his legs falls closed again with a feeble shiver.

Afterglow paints the stuffy air a bit more humid. A boneless hand sneaks back to where it started, curious in a detached way. Shit − as anticipated, he can't stand having a finger on his rim now. Too much, too sensitive to the slightest brush. His toes curl involuntarily until he lets the come dribble out of him in peace, rubs his thighs instead and wonders absent-mindedly if they're getting doughy. Can't remember what color stains his fingers originally. It doesn't even matter, the seed lacks the disdain required to truly mark him. Often, it's pitch-black, and when he kisses the Angelo to quell his inexplicable panic, it bleeds its bile through its mouth until his ribcage cracks and he wakes up. Occasionally it's cloudy white, sometimes transparent and odorless, lewd water. Some dreams have him lick it clean from his hands and even the prick. In some, he lets sentimentality roam free, writes mute words on the armor and marvels how it's the closest he's ever come to cuddling anyone, slimy and exhausted as he is. In quietude that's a little less pregnant than before their coupling, the Angelo lies still and allows him to pretend it's kicking back in foggy sex coma, so he doodles and maps the expanse of its breast with his palms. Every now and then Dante talks to it too, about the weather and his latest mission, and did you know Trish has new heels now? His angel, his taciturn spouse. Those might be the saddest of the bunch. Rarely, the Angelo changes shapes and lies lifeless on the bed. Resuscitation commences immediately, but he only ruptures fragile organs by compressing the chest as hysteria-red blooms under the thin white skin of a corpse. That kind of times stick with him the longest, make his bleary eyes swim in booze. 

And so, night after night he's deflowered and has his virginity reconstructed by dawn. If it can be called such, virginity − in a way, Dante lost his innocence on Mallet already. He had to open his eyes to the fact that there are things worse than death, yeah. Is the knowledge worse than retaining his physical purity? Yes, and it's a moot comparison anyhow. His problems intertwine into each other and take more space with their combined mass than as individual troubles to the point where he himself wouldn't exist as a separate entity from the questions. The more he looks for their answers, the less he cares. How accurate is it, what they do in the shadows and what he recalls of it? No need to know. Enough to sustain him.

The key to understanding Dante is that he loves his delusions more than the truth. He thinks he does. He's less sure, lately, less material. The trick to finding him is to stop searching. "Dante" is ethereal; not a soul alive can tell who he is with laser-sharp precision anymore, but when he's decaying like this, at least he has an idea of what he is.

Will it erase what's left of him from inside out, he wonders on those days when he senses the lingering scent of rot. Thought experiments, the ship of Theseus, metaphysics of identity, what a load of crap. "What's left of him?" He doesn't know which he he's talking about. His own self, possibly. That can go − the water-clogged hull can be replaced by equally moldy planks until the entire paradox has actualized, and not a single thing of value has been lost. But if this is what passes for his brother's gravestone and his memory serves as the crypt keeper, he should get afraid. If these impression and confabulations start to replace actual past, how long does it take until he's entirely made up by them? The Angelo was created to do that on the physical realm, but if Mundus had enough foresight to predict Dante would end up doing all the mental work himself, he may as well have not bothered. Given enough time, this'll do.

Then again. What he stands to lose is the loss of a loss. In these imaginary moments, he has an equal in the Angelo. They're both replacements for better things, the surviving remains. It finds an answering void in him. Every ounce of his guilt laid bare, it gets marginally less incriminating to admit he loves it, too. Not just his brother but what he died as and what he's made him to be in his bed. His name pales for a second and Dante is sorry, but maybe he forgets it one day if he keeps going under to watch it fade until the face chiseled on the helmet is the only one he remembers. It could make him happy, when it starts to feel right that there's nothing behind the mask and it becomes just a head.

Dreams bleed into his reality. He has never been any good at dealing with either, but when they blend, it gets so difficult that he can throw his hands up and stop trying. Blessed are those who are poor in the spirit. A year passes, becomes two. He hates to sleep and sleeps to hate. He is armed with self-hatred and love that only knows how to kill, and the guardian angel he's been blessed with comes to him without ever truly changing into the person it once was.

Madness is doing the same thing time and time again and expecting a different result, they say. Dante is a special guy, though, a real fucking snowflake. His brand of crazy expects the same routines with the same results to stay sated. There is no resolution. Besides. It's not his sanity slipping if it's never been stable to begin with. He can nail it down for a while with enough shots down his throat or blasted into the skulls of others. It's what he does until the loneliness has frayed it and punched holes into his lucidity, big enough for a nightmare to pass through. The thing is − the sea level gets up momentarily after a relapse since a dream lingers fresh for a moment, but in the big picture the water goes down for a while. When he's up to his neck in insanity again, he climbs between the sheets, waits, maybe finds company for one night. That's the hardest concept to imagine, not being alone.

Dante never dreams of him like this.

First times you remember until you don't, you relive them for decades and perhaps wake one day to note you're more alive in them than anywhere else. Maybe this doesn't happen to others, perhaps there is no you or a world outside the bedchamber, maybe it's just that his life is kind of shitty.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Propertius (1,3: “durus uterque deus” in Latin). The gods referred to in the original poem are Amor and Bacchus, which is fitting enough. The Blake poem quoted in the beginning is unsurprisingly called "The Angel". 
> 
> I may have used one DMC 5 battle line here, but hey, I think Vergil using it is a fever dream of Dante's there as well.


End file.
